Thanks for putting your thoughts out there. Will respond to a few things...again I'm just trying to understand this particular issue, as it seems to be very polarizing.
For me "faux-aged" is an easy way for brands to enlarge their customer base by surfing on the vintage trend, especially when it is sold as "faux aged". Most of the time I see it as a lack of imagination, and that is what bothers me even if it can look great. If the original design was great, why not just reissue it without faux age (but with all the modern stuff)?
Are you not in favour of brands enlarging their customer base? Watch brands follow trends all the time - if they didn't they would likely go out of business.
You describe this as a lack of imagination, and I can certainly understand that stance.
But why is that any more of a lack of imagination than changing the black PO to one with an orange bezel and a few orange numbers on the dial? Or making an AT with a bunch of different dials colours (blue dial, silver dial, black dial, and grey dial)? Or making Speedmaster date models with a pile of small differences in dial and bezel colours? Rolex with Pepsi and Coke inserts on GMT's? I could go on nearly forever giving examples of small changes that are designed to sell more watches, and cater to different tastes, so why aren't these all considered a lack of imagination?
If lack of imagination is the problem, then let's face it, pretty much every company is lazy and lacks imagination even if they don't use different colours of lume. But it's the lume that seems to draw some people's ire, and question the intent - this is what I don't really understand.
Now I say that, I realized that I have a Khaki Field (H70595593 to be precise) that could be seen as "faux aged" but I see it as "cream" and I like it
😁
This is exactly the way I feel about the watches with lume that resembles aged tritium or whatever.
@Archer your 2 scenarii are not an issue for me. One person that wants to give a vintage look to his own watch because he likes it better (warmer tone, used to vintage, whatever his reason), why not?
Relume a vintage watch with faux aged luminova is also understandable. You liked it because of its colors, and you want to preserve them (plus having for example white hands with an eggshell dial is a bit weird).
If watch companies are making dials with lume of a colour that looks likes it's aged, to use your words, why not? To me this situation is very much the same, yet when companies do it, it's somehow "wrong" and with some sort of bad intent.
I guess that for me it is just a matter of what the watch should look like given its age and life plus the initial intend behind the color choice: was it because it just looks better or because you wanted to mass-produce it and market it as "vintage look" to make easy money?
Again, easy money is the best kind to make, and I'm not sure why this should be treated so differently than all the other ways Omega and others brands make easy money. Like Speedmaster LE's for example...
But your view of what a new watch "should" look like is yours, and not necessarily what watch designers think. You seem to associate this is white lume, but if the designers and brand have used another colour, then that's what the watch "should" look like, right? It's the brand that decides what the watch is going to look like.
I'll admit that back in 2008 when the two versions of the JLC Tribute to Polaris came out, the "1968" with the coloured lume looked very strange to me, but at the time I wasn't really collecting vintage watches. I really preferred the "1965" version that had applied numerals and white lume. But over time I became more interested in vintage watches, and I would now probably pick the 1968 version over the 1965.
Put another way, a modern Speedmaster Pro with white lume is not a watch I have any desire to own. To me the thing that makes any Speedmaster desirable is the lume colour, so I own this one instead:
But if couldn't find one that was in good shape and had the lume colour I wanted, then I would probably do this (relumed modern hands and dial):
Again as you say it's a much warmer tone, and that appeals to me vintage or not. I don't consider it anything nefarious, or to have any bad intent - it's just what I like. If a modern watch is made that way from the factory, why is that really any different?
Again, very much appreciate you giving your thoughts in some detail.
Cheers, Al
